Data Visualization Lesson Plan

Students have many different learning styles and one of the keys to being able to communicate effectively to a group of high school students is to teach in multiple learning styles. (I requested a class of students that all learn the same way that I do, but my request was denied!)

I have found for many of my students, basic concepts like working with fractions, working with negative numbers, finding a common denominator, or finding a least common multiple were still challenging concepts for a number of my students. The following Common Denominator Lesson Plan is visual, audio, and hands on. The verbal instructions are read through by the instructor with some "pie" visualization diagrams included along the way. These diagrams are used to show how, for example, how to find a common denominator for 1/3 and 1/4 and ultimately how to add these two fractions together. Finally, the lesson ends by giving the students an opportunity to use the visualization tool to find common denominators.

From Bloom's perspective, this lesson spends most of its time on the Knowledge, Comprehension, and Application levels. So, while this lesson is relatively simple from Bloom's perspective, it is effective in explaining a basic math concept. I could see extending this lesson by assigning an exercise which uses the Common Denominator concept in a more comprehensive lesson which incorporates the Evaluation and Synthesis levels in Bloom's Taxonomy.